Double Digits

There is no way that this tiny little baby girl is really 10 Months Old!!  She is such a sweetie & a blessing to our family!

Her favorite thing to do is follow Collin around the house & get into whatever he is playing with…which can cause problems when he is trying to build a Lego tower or put together his train tracks.

She still loves her “baby milk”, but has pretty much given up baby food for real food.  Her favorites are chick-fil-a nuggets…big surprise ;) and sweet potatoes, peas, yogurt, and blueberry waffles.

She is very proficient at “cruising” around the house & can even stand on her own for a few seconds, but won’t take any steps without holding on to something or someone.

She HATES the new pacis I bought for her & still only wants the newborn kind from the hospital, which I am blaming for the huge gap between her front teeth…so mommy is trying hard to make the switch!

She is my happy girl, but much more active than big brother.  Collin was my shopping buddy & would spend all day with me in the stroller/car seat/highchair running errands, but Grace is done with shopping carts, car seats, highchairs and strollers after about an hour.

She laughs, claps, dances, waves “hi” and “bye”, loves peek-a-boo, and even fake coughs :)

She is not quite 17 lbs, has 6 teeth, and tons of dark hair that mommy loves brushing and fixing with pretty bows!

Love this baby girl!

C is For Collin

For a while now I have wanted to come up with some sort of plan for teaching Collin at home.  He loves learning & picks up on things so quickly that I want to encourage him and try to continue to present new ideas and activities to him.

We are pretty busy with 3 out of 5 mornings scheduled to be out of the house, but I thought that we still had plenty of down time to squeeze some learning in!

After hours of wasting time on Pinterest & Blogs, then finally getting some good advice from my really smart teacher sister, I decided to just make it fun and no-pressure.  Becca also suggested starting with the letters in his name – which I thought was a fabulous idea!

So…the past 2 weeks have been “C is for Collin”!!  Basically we read books, pick out words starting with “C”, sing songs about the sound letter “C” makes, and other fun things.  Collin gets really excited now whenever he sees a letter C in a new place :)

One of the first things we did last week was make a craft using “C is for Caterpillar”.  Basically I let him draw on a piece of green construction paper…see Gracie supervising??  She wanted the markers sooooo badly!!

Then I traced circles on an orange page in the shape of the letter.

I cut out matching circles from Collin’s “picture” and let him use a glue stick to put them in place.  He LOVED that part!

Then we drew on a face, antennae, and feet.  So cute!  He still loves looking at it & showing it off to anyone who will look :) 

Another fun idea I had was to use his matchbox cars to make the letter.  After we practiced a few times this is his “C” that he made all by himself!!  And he is the one that picked out all the orange cars to use :)

We are having fun with it & I am so happy with how well he did.  Up next is the letter “O” which he already knows, so that should be pretty quick.

Also a first today, Collin James wrote his name!!!!  I know that I am probably the only one who can read it, and it was actually much easier to read the first time he wrote it, but he kept wanting to do it over and over again, so this is what we ended up with.  His “C” and “o” are really great, and it is pretty easy to draw an “l”.  His favorite is the “i” because he thinks the dot on top is fun :)  The “n” is tough, but I thought he did pretty awesome for his first ever attempt!!

A Seussical Celebration

After months of searching I have FINALLY decided on a theme for Collin' & Grace’s birthday party!!  Don’t get me started on how much I would love to have individual boy/girl parties for them, but with all of their friends being our family friends I just didn’t think it made sense to have 2 parties 2 weekends in a row & invite the exact same people

So…that brings us to the joint party.  Although I have to say that after I accepted the fact that they would be sharing parties for at least a few more years, I quickly became SUPER excited about it when Dede, Jimbo, AND Aunt Becca all offered to come in town to help celebrate!!

You have no idea how excited I am to actually have family at their party!!  I have gone back & forth on the scale of the party…should I go small since we will have family here, or should I do a big blow-out for Grace’s 1st Birthday similar to what we had for Collin??  I am still not 100% sure but my mom keeps telling me to go big since I will have help, and I am starting to like that idea

Anyways, that brings us to the reason for this post…to show-off the invitation that I created! I am so excited because I did it myself…I know it’s nothing fancy, but I love the wording that I found for the double party & I think it turned out pretty cute.  The only thing left to do is take a picture of Collin & Grace as we get closer to the party to add in the circle spot.

Ta-daa!!

Now to sort through the 1,000,000,000 ideas I have “pinned” on Pinterest & decide on decorations, food, activities, etc.

What does Jesus do for Collin?

Driving home from church one night…

Collin: What happened?

Mommy: The battery on my phone died.

Collin: Died.  Oh no!  Like the diver?

Mommy: The diver on Nemo?

Collin:  Yes, I don’t like the diver.  I don’t like the shark on Nemo.  I am afraid of the shark.

Mommy:  It’s okay, it’s just a movie.

Collin: Who can help me not to be afraid of the sharks?

Mommy: Mommy can help you.

Collin: Who else?

Mommy: Daddy can help you.

Collin: Who else?

Mommy:  I don’t know, who else can help you?

Collin: JESUS!!

Mommy: Jesus can help you to not be afraid of the sharks on Nemo?

Collin:  Yes!  Jesus will “Hi-yah” them and make them go away in the ocean!

Just a typical car conversation with my soon-to-be three-year-old